Saturday, December 08, 2007

Usage: Used for baking. Selection: Good-quality Red Bananas are slightly soft and the skin will be purple or maroon-red. Slight scars do not affect quality. Avoid: Avoid product that is extremely soft, completely black or spotted with mold around the stem.

Banana Tips & TriviaTo ripen green bananas, put them into a plastic bag, seal it and place the bag in a warm place like on top of your refrigerator. This will cause the bananas to heat up which speeds the ripening process. You can also put other green fruit like peaches and pears into the bag with a ripe banana, and they will ripen faster as well!You can freeze bananas! Just peel and store in plastic bags up to 6 months.Thaw and drain frozen extra-ripe bananas and use in baked goods... or slice frozen into blender drinks. Have for breakfast, snack, refreshment or as a frosty ice cream-like dessert without all the extra fat or calories.Sauté green-tipped bananas until brown in just enough margarine or cooking spray to coat. Serve as a side dish or "starch" with chicken, pork or even fish.As the green color of bananas turns to yellow, the starch in the fruit turns to sugar.

Alexander the Great discovered bananas in his conquest of India in 327 B.C.

Bananas don't grow on trees, as is commonly believed. They grow on compacted, water-filled leaf stalks that grow up to 25 feet high. They are the world's largest herb. (Source: The Packer, 9/9/89)

In India, weather-related natural disasters already cause annual chaos. Two months ago, whole regions of West Bengal disappeared under water - rescue workers had to use boats to give emergency help to more than 16 million affected people.

These were the worst floods for more than 20 years. One of the problems is that these models are sometimes converted into scary stories which is something we shouldn't fall for

Dr RR Kelkar Several factors were blamed - from silted riverbeds to mismanagement of resources. But could global warming also have played a part?

Journalist Nirmal Ghosh firmly believes global warming is going to cause far more chaos across India in the future.

"Global warming is going to make other small local environmental issues... seem like peanuts, because it is the big one which is going to come and completely change the face of the Earth.

"We're talking about mass migrations because of changing weather. That will have implications on politics. There are states in India which are fighting court cases over water," Mr Ghosh says.

Shrinking glaciers

As well as floods, India also suffers acute water shortages - earlier this year the western state of Rajasthan was struck by drought.

Nirmal Ghosh says the steady shrinking of Himalayan glaciers means the entire water system is being disrupted - global warming, he says, will cause even greater extremes.

The Himalayan glaciers are said to be shrinking

"Statistically, it is proven that the Himalayan glaciers are actually shrinking, and within 50 to 60 years they will virtually run out of producing the water levels that we are seeing now.

"This will cut down drastically the water available downstream, and in agricultural economies like the plains of UP (Uttar Pradesh) and Bihar, which are poor places to begin with. This is probably going to, over a short period of time, cause tremendous social upheaval," he says.

Not everyone agrees. Some scientists say the glaciers have been shrinking for decades and other factors are to blame.

Certainly, India has a long history of extreme weather patterns - and extremes of temperature across the continent. So is it too simplistic to blame global warming just because recent floods and droughts have been acute?

West blamed

Dr RR Kelkar, the director general of the Indian meteorological department, says it is too early for accurate data to be available yet.

"India is a tropical country, we must remember that. We are used to hot environments, we are used to heavy rains, we are used to cyclones, and really there is no clear statistically significant trend that things are going to change drastically.

India suffers acute water shortages

"There is a need now for scientists to probe into them and find out how they will be affecting us - but one of the problems is that these models are sometimes converted into scary stories which is something we shouldn't fall for," Dr Kelkar says. Scary stories or not, there are also concerns that knowledge being gathered about the impact of global warming is controlled by the West. Scientists in the subcontinent do not always have the resources available to challenge data being compiled by developed countries. Professor SK Sinha is a specialist at the water technology centre at the Pusa Institute. He accuses the West, and in particular the United States, of manipulating the debate. "They make the rules. In fact, they even lure people from the developing countries to substantiate or to confirm that data, not necessarily always with very valid equipments and arguments," he says. Cyclones, floods and droughts aren't in themselves new - but how much is global warming likely to worsen them, and how far will countries like India be able to influence the global debate? Courtesy "BBC News"

The lowest temperature in chennai in the past 10 years was 62 degrees Fahrenheit i.e. about 16.7 degrees Centigrade. This was recorded on 27th January 1999.The link I have provided in the source will give you the recorded temperature by days for any day/month or week and you can review the temperatures over December, January and February months over the last 10 years and figure out the coldest days in Chennai.In addition, in the last 10 years, 64 deg F was recorded on the following days: (with the Max temp in parenthesis)30 Jan 1999 - 64 (89)31 Jan 1999 - 64 (87)20 Feb 2004- 64 (87)14 Feb 2005- 64 (94)19 Jan 2006 - 64 (87)15 Feb 2006- 64 (90)In addition, you will find that there was this recorded temperature of 41 deg F on Dec 19, 1999 (at 10 am) and also 37.4 deg F on 4 Feb 2004 (at 2 am). Interestingly, within an hour of these records, the temperature was above 70 deg F. Therefore, it is very likely that these were human errors while creating the webpage. I believe the above to be true based on the following, which records that in the NOrth, you do not get temp below 10.2 since 70's!Elsewhere, you find the following, which is authentic record from weather related sites about Tamil Nadu, and yuo can infer from this, some truth about Chennai (madras):In Tamil Nadu January is the coldest month when the daily minimum temperature for the state as a whole is 21C varing from about 16C in the north to about 24C in the south. The lowest temperature ever recorded at an individual station in the plain is 10.2C. at Tirupattur on 15th December 1974 which is 5.9C lower than the normal of the coldest month. In the ghat areas Uthagamandalam registered the lowest minimum temperature of -2.1C on 7th January 1976 which is 7.3C lower than the normal of the coldest month.Finally, some sites state the lowest temp recorded in Chennai as being 15.8, which although authentic (mentioned in many sites and books about Chennai), but possibly not in the last ten years as the temp never went below 62 deg F in the last 10 years (but for those two dates, which i believe are human errors in recording in the internet page!). btw, 15.8 deg C means 60.44 deg Fahrenheit - almost 1.56 degree F lower than the recorded 62 in the last 10 years.